


and still i will live here

by orphan_account



Category: Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)
Genre: F/F, dinah cleans helena up! helena cries!, dinah loves her himbo jock gf, helena has feelings, showering, tenderness? yearning? who knows, this is very soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:42:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24045337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: helena is sad. dinah takes care of her.
Relationships: Helena Bertinelli/Dinah Lance
Comments: 11
Kudos: 191





	and still i will live here

**Author's Note:**

> i don't know exactly what this is but i hope you like it.

Dinah tried not to get mad when it came to Helena not communicating. It wasn’t her fault she had been raised by a trio of gruff Italian dudes who preferred fists to words, so Dinah didn’t hold it against her when she flatly refused to talk about her emotions or didn’t tell Dinah where she was going at night. Dinah worried, obviously, and did her best to explain to Helena that part of being in a relationship with another person was sharing how you felt, but if it wasn’t a big deal, Dinah left it alone. 

In fact, she almost always left it alone. If Helena didn’t want to talk, Dinah didn’t press. She asked once, received a nod or a shake of the head, and went from there. It worked well enough for them. Well, most of the time. It sure as hell didn’t work when Helena came home from a so-called jog soaked head to fucking toe in blood and couldn’t even spare Dinah a glance. 

“Jesus Christ” Dinah gaped, watching Helena bend over to unlace her running shoes. She reeked, the coppery tang of blood nearly making Dinah gag, and her tank top and shorts and face and hair and hands were practically dripping. “Helena, are you hurt?” 

Helena didn’t say anything, just slid her shoes off and set them on the mat carefully before straightening. There was a thin cut along her hairline and a fresh bruise on her jaw and a mixture of blood and dirt smeared across her cheeks and she looked through Dinah like she wasn’t there, eyes bloodshot and empty. It was May, so a sweater wasn’t that important for being outside, but Helena’s toned arms were crusted with the same blood and dirt and sweat mixture and it looked like she was wearing a dirty red long-sleeve.

“Baby. What happened?” Dinah asked, softer this time, as if a gentle voice would make the blood on Helena’s skin disappear, as if talking quietly would scrub her clean and force her to open up. Helena took a ragged breath, blood flaking off her throat as it bobbed, and for a moment it looked like she was about to burst into tears. She didn’t, because she insisted she had no emotions and never cried, instead vanishing into their bedroom without a word. 

She left bloody footprints on the floor, somehow her socks were also covered in blood, and the bathroom door shut with barely any noise. Dinah wished Helena had slammed it. She wished Helena had done something, screamed or punched a wall or thrown a tantrum or chucked a plate across the room, anything besides the awful, terrible silence. The shower turned on and Dinah took a deep breath of her own, turning on her heel and following Helena into their room. 

The footprints led directly to the bathroom, faint red and enormous, and Dinah placed one foot beside the outline of Helena’s. Dinah had smaller feet than Helena, which wasn’t hard to accomplish because Helena’s feet were fucking massive, and she wracked her brain for a moment. Helena’s parents had been born in the winter, so that wasn’t it, her brother’s birthday was in the fall, the anniversary of their massacre wasn’t until July. What was it? 

Dinah counted backwards from twenty, then forwards to thirty, then backwards to zero, listening to the shower run in silence, and when she hit zero she tested the knob. It was their system. If Helena wanted to be left alone, she locked the door behind her. If the door was locked, Dinah got her a glass of water and held her all night without a word. If the door wasn’t locked, Dinah could talk to her and help her and cover her face with kisses. 

The bathroom door wasn’t locked. Dinah muttered a silent prayer and nudged it open, the reek of blood hitting her in the face hard enough to make her gag. It was awful, thick and metallic and sour, and Dinah swallowed hard before stepping inside and shutting the door behind her. The bloody footprints continued towards the shower, a trail of discarded clothes following like a really bad Hansel and Gretel. 

“Helena?” Dinah flicked the fan on, hoping it would clear out some of the blood’s stench, and approached the shower glass carefully. Helena was sitting on the tiles, head between her knees with her hair hanging limp around her face. She didn’t look up, didn’t flicker, the water puddled around her stained a brilliant red. 

Dinah listened. Helena was silent and perfectly still, she gave no indication that she knew Dinah was there, but the unsteady movements of her shoulders started to even out, her breathing almost easier. Like Dinah’s presence was a comfort. Dinah picked up one of the bottles of shampoo, the yellow stuff that Helena liked, and knelt down in front of her. 

“I need to wash your hair.” Dinah said quietly, ignoring the water soaking into the knees of her sweats. There was blood matted in Helena’s hair, glueing errant strands to her forehead, and there were visible tear tracks cutting through the grime on her face. “Okay?” 

Helena nodded, almost imperceptibly, cracks webbing across the blood dried on her shoulders, and she inhaled sharply when Dinah began to wash her hair. Slow, easy movements, combing through each strand as carefully as she could, bits of blood flaking off in Dinah’s fingers and running in clumps down Helena’s back. 

They were both silent, Helena’s breathing slow and even, and Dinah worked the shampoo through her hair as gently as she could. Helena had nice hair, soft and dark and perpetually dishevelled, Dinah could have spent hours combing her fingers through it, but she just tipped Helena’s head back to rinse the bubbles out. 

Helena finally, finally looked at her. Her eyes were wide and dark and utterly empty, rimmed red with dark smudges beneath them. Dinah had never seen Helena look like this, completely hollowed out, like a wounded animal. It was terrifying and Dinah ran her nails along Helena’s scalp gently, letting her lean into the touch. 

“It was our birthday today.” Helena said, so quiet Dinah could barely hear her over the shower, and Dinah frowned. Helena’s birthday was Valentine’s day. She cleaned the last of the shampoo from Helena’s hair and squirted a bit of conditioner into her palm, keeping her mouth closed. If Helena wanted to explain, she would. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t. Dinah never pressed. She couldn’t. 

“We celebrated together every year. Me and Pino. He hated that our birthdays were so far apart, so we picked the date in the exact middle and that’s when we celebrated. Always. Our parents couldn’t stand it, but Pino was so stubborn.” Another tear ran down Helena’s face, dripping off her chin, and she shut her eyes when Dinah began to rinse the conditioner out. “We’d have a birthday party together. He got to pick all the decorations and the cake and the theme. The last one we had was trains, because he was obsessed with trains.” 

Dinah picked up a washcloth and poured soap into it, letting Helena watch her with that raw, painful gaze. She was still covered in blood and dirt, it coated her arms up to her shoulders and smeared her legs, and Dinah took one of Helena’s hands in her own and began to scrub. Long fingers, perpetually bruised knuckles, scars on her palms and nails filed down. Dinah cleaned the filth from beneath her nails and between her fingers, scrubbed Helena’s hand until it was pink and clean, and wrung out the cloth. 

The water that came out was dark red, awful red, and Dinah added more soap and started to work on her forearm. Helena watched her do it, hair dripping, eyes red, goosebumps prickling across her shoulders and back. Dinah worked in silence, every swipe of the cloth revealing pale skin and fine dark hair, the occasional scar or bruise or cut. If soap in her scrapes stung, Helena didn’t react, she just looked at Dinah and started speaking again. 

“He was my best friend.” Helena’s words were shaky, like she was forcing the words out from some broken part of her heart. “I remember how tiny he was when he was born. I was three, and my dad took me to see him and my mom in the hospital. He was so small, and he was crying, but I let him hold my finger and he stopped crying.” 

Dinah stayed quiet. Helena almost never talked about her brother, all Dinah really knew about him was that he had given her the little plastic car she held onto and that his name was Gisueppe but everyone called him Pino (how Gisueppe was shortened to Pino, Dinah wasn’t sure, but she figured it was an Italian thing). She started on Helena’s other hand, getting all the blood out from under her fingernails, and let Helena keep talking. 

“I took care of him. I had to. I protected him from everything, from our parents, from bullies, he was the only person who loved me unconditionally. No matter what I did, what I said, I loved him and he loved me. But when he needed me-” Helena’s voice broke and she let out a strangled sort of gasping noise that made Dinah’s heart shatter into pieces, her shoulders heaving beneath Dinah’s scrubbing. “When he needed me, I failed him. I lost him. He died, because I couldn’t save him.” 

“My love.” Dinah ran the cloth over the blood dried on Helena’s forehead, careful with the soap in the cut, and kissed the clean skin gently. “You didn’t fail him. You didn’t fail anyone. Helena, you were a child.” 

“I didn’t help him.” Helena shut her eyes and let Dinah clean blood out of her eyebrows, flakes catching in her lashes. “When they started shooting, I didn’t help him. I didn’t try to protect him. I hid. I was a coward. I failed him.” 

Dinah kissed her eyelid, soft and sweet, and kept wiping away the grime on her cheeks. “You were eight years old. You weren’t a coward. You were a kid.” 

Helena just sat, water running down her spine and dripping from her hair, dark purple bruises mottling her ribs and knees and arms. She looked younger like this, huddled in the shower with her knees tucked up to her chest, and for a moment Dinah could see how she might have looked as a child. Her jaw softer, cheeks rounder, a nose that hadn’t been broken and dark eyes with no agony behind them. Dinah had always imagined Helena as a very serious child, mostly because she was a very serious adult, but the idea of this young girl being fiercely protective of her little brother made something twist in Dinah’s chest. 

“He should have lived.” Helena let Dinah begin to clean her legs, scrubbing the blood and dirt out of the fine dark hair covering her calves, and another tear rolled down her cheek. “He was good. I wasn’t. I’m not. He would have been a better adult than me. He would have been a better everything than me. I’m twenty years older than he’ll ever get to be and for what? For me to mope and cry in the shower and kill people?” 

“Darling.” Dinah was gentle with the thick scar that ran up the side of Helena’s thigh, careful to get the blood off the puckered skin, and she leaned down to press a soft kiss to the top of Helena’s knee. “You can’t think like that. You can’t spend the rest of your life wishing you had died instead of him. It’s not fair to you. You are so brave, and so strong, and so kind, and so good. I can’t have you thinking anything different. Stretch out your legs.” 

Helena stretched out her legs and swallowed hard when Dinah began to clean the skin where her thighs met her hips. She was almost scrubbed clean, raw and shivering despite the heat of the water, and Dinah kissed the top of her shoulder as she finished cleaning her off. Helena didn’t say a word, the bruise on her jaw stark against her pale skin, just let Dinah finish washing her off and stood when Dinah pulled her up. 

“I love you.” Dinah whispered, rinsing the last of the blood and dirt from Helena’s body and then turning the shower off. Grime ringed the drain but Helena was clean, dripping wet with bruises patterning her skin. Dinah’s shirt and pants were soaked, clinging to her, and she grabbed a towel to dry Helena off. 

“I love you too.” Helena said as Dinah towelled off her torso, a warm look on her face. “So much. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” 

Dinah smiled, doing her best to be delicate when she rubbed the towel over the tender bruises and scrapes. She had to get on her toes to dry Helena’s hair, leaving it damp and tousled, and then she led Helena into their bedroom. The lights were off, streetlamps from outside filling their room with a soft orange glow, and Dinah opened the dresser without letting go of Helena’s hand. 

“Okay.” Dinah found a faded black tank top and some pyjama pants, tossing them onto the bed before sitting Helena down on the edge of the mattress. Helena started to protest, because she was stubborn as all hell, but Dinah fixed her with a glare and knelt down to get her into the loose plaid pants. Helena hated being taken care of, but she deserved it. She deserved everything good and kind in this world. 

“Will you stay with me?” Helena asked softly, lifting her arms so Dinah could pull the tank top over her head. She looked achingly, impossibly young like this, damp hair mussed and eyes dark and wide and lips just barely parted, and even though Dinah needed to put Helena’s clothes in the washing machine and/or the garbage can, plus clean the bloody footprints off the floor, plus at least three other things, the look on Helena’s face had her tugging her wet shirt off with a smile.

Dinah tossed her soaked clothes into the bathroom and dug around in the drawers until she found a shirt, Helena’s shirt, and put it on. It smelt of her, like rain and jasmine, and Dinah turned around to see nothing but Helena’s head sticking out from under the covers. Their bed was big enough that Helena looked tiny, like a child in their parents’ bed, and Dinah smiled faintly before crawling in beside her. 

Helena rolled over, resting her head in Dinah’s lap and using her thigh as a pillow. Dinah ran her fingers through Helena’s hair gently, earning the smallest of sighs, and tucked a lock behind her ear. She took a deep breath, opened her mouth, and started to sing. 

She sang softly, sweetly, separating and braiding Helena’s hair in gentle motions and letting her nails drag along Helena’s scalp. Dinah didn’t sing very often, especially not like this, with Helena’s head in her lap and orange light dancing across their bed, listening to Helena’s breathing even out into those raspy, lovely sounds that meant she was asleep. 

“I’m glad you lived, Helena.” Dinah said, finishing a braid and parting Helena’s hair again. No matter what Helena thought, no matter her guilt, Dinah would be forever grateful that Helena didn’t die with the rest of the Bertinellis. What would she be without Helena’s sleepy smile or her warm laugh or the way she would do anything for the people she cared about? Her life would be hollow without Helena, and she leaned down to kiss the top of Helena’s head. “For what it’s worth, I am very, very glad you lived.”

**Author's Note:**

> dedicated to dani and the hivemind, the coolest dykes i know.


End file.
